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www.wate.com...
Summitt: Stepping down was "very surprising...and very hurtful"
Summitt claims in her affidavit that Hart approached her with his decision to replace Summitt with current head coach Holly Warlick March 14, prior to the team traveling to Chicago, Ill. for the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
"During this one-on-one meeting, Dave Hart indicated to me that I would not be coaching the Lady Vol Basketball Team in the next school year (2012-13)," Summitt said according to the affidavit filed Wednesday.
Summitt continues in the affidavit, claiming Hart's message was contradictory to the way she wished to handle the situation.
www.wate.com...
A timeline of events: UT fraternity alcohol enema case
"I have a sworn affidavit from J.P. Carney that says everything that was gathered by Knoxville police investigator Patricia Tipton is false, misleading and a total lie, and we will stand by that until hell freezes over," said Broughton's lawyer Dan McGehee.
espn.go.com...
Pat Summitt initially felt forced out
The signed affidavit was part of a lawsuit filed against the University of Tennessee by former Lady Vols media director Debby Jennings. In it, Summitt said Hart told her at a March 14 meeting prior to the NCAA tournament that she would have to step down at the end of the season. Summitt had revealed before the season that she was battling early-onset dementia.
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At the April news conference announcing her retirement, Tyler Summitt said the move was his mother's decision.
Pat Summitt said that day: "It's never a good time, but you have to find the time that you think is the right time and that is now."
www.freep.com...&usatref=sportsmod?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CSports%7Cp
Summitt: Tennessee AD told me I wouldn't be back
Legendary women's basketball coach Pat Summitt claims in a sworn affidavit filed Wednesday in federal court that Tennessee athletics director Dave Hart told her in a March 14, 2012, meeting that she would step down after the season and he planned to name assistant Holly Warlick as head coach.
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In the affidavit, Summit also claims Hart told her in a Feb. 15 meeting that he wanted to place all of Tennessee's athletics teams under the same "power T" logo instead of the Lady Volunteers brand.
"I was angered when he came out in an interview with the media in May 2012 and denied that he ever intended to do away with the Lady Vol logo," the affidavit states.
sportsillustrated.cnn.com...
www.usatoday.com...
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Pat Summitt said Friday she decided on her own not to continue coaching the Lady Vols and never felt Tennessee athletic director Dave Hart forced her out.
"It was entirely my decision to step down from my position as the head coach of women's basketball at the University of Tennessee," Summitt said in a three-paragraph statement in response to the "misunderstandings" created by her comments in a signed affidavit that was released Wednesday.
Summitt said she wanted to clarify her comments in the affidavit.
www.tennessean.com...
SPECIAL REPORT: SPORTS-RELATED CONCUSSIONS
The invisible injury in impact sports and young athletes
Concussions in Tennessee
Some call it getting your bell rung or being dinged, but concussions are much more serious than that. And when a young athlete returns to play before healing, the consequences can be dire. That's why leagues and lawmakers are stepping in to protect fragile brains. But Tennessee is behind in those efforts.
www.tennessean.com...
Concussions in Tennessee
Number of injuries surges
But doctors who specialize in youth concussion care say the issue is urgent.
The number of youth concussions treated at hospitals in Tennessee has increased 74 percent from 480 in 2007 to 834 in 2010, according to the state’s Traumatic Brain Injury Program, which functions as a resource for Tennesseans recovering from brain injuries. Those numbers do not include young athletes who were treated by their pediatricians instead of going to the emergency room.
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Upended lives
Beyond the field, athletes who sustain concussions have their entire lives altered by the injuries. The prescribed treatment for a concussion is primarily rest, which means a recovering high school athlete is kept away from video games, iPads, computers and cellphones.
www.tennessean.com...
Holdsclaw produced a handgun, fired inside the SUV and fled the scene, the report said. Police said they later recovered a 9mm shell casing at the scene. Lacy was not injured, police said.
www.wate.com...
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - A UT football player was arrested for underage consumption and public intoxication on Sunday morning, according to the Knoxville Police Department.
Brendan Downs, a sophomore tight end on the UT football team, was at Whiskey Dix around 1 a.m. on the Strip.
The manager of the club escorted Downs outside for drinking in the club underage.
Moshak is a co-plaintiff in a U.S. District Court lawsuit against UT alleging discrimination and retaliation filed on Oct. 11, 2012. She had been the lone plaintiff still employed by the university. Associate strength and conditioning coach Heather Mason was relieved of her duties this spring. Collin Schlosser, a former associate director for women’s strength and conditioning, was among 15 UT athletic department employees terminated on April 16, 2012.
Through an open records request by the News Sentinel, it was learned that Stewart sent an email to university assistant general counsel Michael D. Fitzgerald on Aug. 1 with concerns over the UT work environment in the wake of Mason’s firing on April 25. Stewart described the situation as “untenable” and taking “a serious toll” on Moshak’s health and well-being. Before counseling Moshak to continue at UT, he asked the university to consider reopening the director of sports medicine position held by Jason McVeigh.
The new suit alleges that the university retaliated against Moshak by demoting her from her previous title of associate athletics director for sports medicine and reducing her supervisory authority. The suit says Moshak previously supervised sports medicine/athletic training for all women’s sports. It also noted McVeigh’s promotion to his aforementioned title.
Once progressive Tennessee takes major hit with discrimination suits
The suit filed on Oct. 11 by Moshak, Heather Mason, a Lady Vol strength and conditioning coach and Collin Schlosser, a former Lady Vol strength and conditioning coach who was one of the three men laid off in the downsizing, reinforces Jennings's portrayal of a department that has turned into a "good ol' boys club". The suit, which does not name Hart specifically, contends that the three plaintiffs were subjected to pay discrimination based on their gender and/or association with women's athletics, and were subjected to retaliation for filing a 2010 pay discrimination complaint with UT's Office of Equity and Diversity (which the OED eventually dismissed.) In Moshak's case, the suit contends that she was demoted, stripped of most of her supervisorial authority (including oversight and supervision of Team Enhance) and denied opportunity to apply for the head training position that eventually went to her counterpart on the men's side. The suit also contends that the university has allowed "a pattern and practice of gender discrimination to develop which indicates a lack of institutional control" and has created "a testosterone wall" that denies women equal pay and the plaintiffs the opportunity to advance by working in men's athletics.
[Exclusive] Former UT official: Officials wrecked my career over allegations of relations with students
"In the most detailed explanation of the allegations yet, Wright wrote that she was accused of “retaliat(ing) against a student-athlete by initiating the disciplinary process to suspend him from the university.”"
"Wright declined to talk about her departure from the university other than to categorically deny the allegations. She instead referred to her online statement, which said that resigning was the best option available. She expressed fear that a university investigation “would turn into a sensationalist exhibition rather than a search for the truth.”"
"On a professional website created this week, Wright posted a nearly 1,000-word explanation of her departure from UT, stating she was the victim of workplace bullying, criticism, harassment and pressure from the UT administration and athletics department."
Personnel Fouls: Sex Discrimination Suits Shake Tennessee Athletics
by Nina Martin
Usually, she said, “discriminatory decisions are made one at a time,” over an extended period, so the pattern may not be apparent. But because of how the process has gone at UT, “it’s all so obvious. It’s a window into the discriminatory decision-making that happens every day in college athletics. And the fact that it’s happening at a school like this really highlights the extent to which discrimination is a problem everywhere.”
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Debby Jennings, for instance, whose work as the longtime women’s sports information director had earned her a national reputation, discovered that her base salary was $4,000 lower than that of her men’s counterpart even though she had a list of accomplishments and awards that went on for pages. Moshak and her colleagues on the women’s strength and conditioning staff, Heather Mason and Collin Schlosser, found not only that they were paid less than men’s trainers — in Mason’s case, some $100,000 less than her football counterparts — but that the university had ignored its own personnel policies and had offered benefits to the men’s side, such as employment contracts, not available to them.
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After the dust had settled, the reconfigured executive staff of the athletic department consisted of seven men and a single woman, while the senior administrative staff was made up of 13 men and two women. The reorganization “effectively resulted in a mass demotion of females and staff working with female student-athletes,” Moshak, Mason and Schlosser claimed. Where the old organizational structure had afforded them autonomy and opportunities for advancement, now the woman’s staff faced what they called a “testosterone wall.”
The lawsuits have also unearthed some recent history that the school might have wished stayed buried. Jennings, in her suit, says the Lady Vols’ most revered icon, Summitt, was pushed out of her job against her will, and that Jennings paid a personal price for standing up for her hero – a set of accusations that were widely reported in local media outlets and in other sports publications and that briefly rekindled the furor over women’s athletics at Tennessee.
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According to Jennings — who worked alongside Summitt for 35 years and co-authored several books with her — Dave Hart told Summitt that she wouldn’t be coaching the Lady Vols during the 2012-13 season. Summitt was “very upset and extremely hurt,” Jennings says in her lawsuit, and she protested the decision in an email to Hart, calling it “discriminatory” and “wrong.” A couple of months later, Jennings contends, she herself was forced out in retaliation.
In court documents filed last fall, Summitt corroborated Jennings’s account. Hart’s decision “was very surprising to me and very hurtful as that was a decision I would have liked to make on my own at the end of the season after consulting with my family, doctors, colleagues and friends,” she wrote in a sworn affidavit.
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Later this month, the Tucker Center’s associate director, Nicole LaVoi, will release a new study and report card focusing on the number of female coaches in the top NCAA schools. According to Lavoi’s data, UT’s head coaching staff is now 38.5 percent female, below the national average.
The grade she gives to the once-lauded UT program: a D.